Giveaway Results / Amazon Giveaways

As I mentioned when I started my giveaway for a set of Rory's Story Cubes: I don't know how this Amazon Giveaways thing will turn out. I don't know what king of information I'll get from them, and so on.

I wasn't sure what information I'd get about the winner, either.

Turns out, I got one piece of info - and only one.  I have a name.

Amazon contacted the winner and took care of getting the cubes shipped. At least, I hope they've shipped by now.

The winner's name was Zoya. And that's all the information I have.

That's good, by the way.

Here's a screencap of my Giveaways Dashboard:

It strikes me as just the right amount of information. It's enough that I can announce the winner, but not so much that I can cause problems for them.

So congrats to Zoya. I hope you enjoy your new Story Cubes. I hope you find them as awesome as I have.

And thanks to the rest of you for entering.

Next week, I'll write more about Origins and the fun we had, and I'll talk about a game or two I've played that I think you might enjoy.

You know: get things back to normal around here.

As ever, thanks for reading.

Origins: The Trip

Our Epic Journey So Far

The Plan:
Leave Seattle around 1:30 pm.
1.5 hour layover in Chicago
Arrive Ohio around 11:45 pm.

Seems reasonable on the face of it. I mean ... getting people around is what airlines do, right?

We arrived at the airport shortly after 11 am. SeaTac airport is one of our favorites, and not just because it's home.  The drawback is that their security lines are not very efficient.

We got through in plenty of time, however, and were soon seated at our gate, waiting for time to board.

The first leg went without any problems. Landed in Chicago on time, checked the location of our next leg, and headed to the gate.

When we arrived, there was a mob of folks already there. Waiting for an earlier flight to Indianapolis that was already late.  That was a bit of a red flag, but out of our control.

Someone is going to pop up and tell me, "United sucks! They do this all the time!" And they'll be right, but here's the thing:

EVERY US-based airline sucks. It's all a matter of who sucks worse this week. Seriously. Airlines lose dogs, smash guitars, fly to the wrong airport, put children on the wrong flights, and serve as fashion police ALL THE TIME.  There is no good option when choosing an internal flight in the US.

Either way: The Indianapolis flight had a crew, but no airplane. A short while later, they delayed our flight. WE had an airplane, but no crew. Why they didn't just steal our plane for the Indianapolis flight, I do not know. And will probably never know. But they didn't.

Long story short: They ended up cancelling both flights, after stringing us along for several hours.

And they cancelled both at the same time.

And didn't warn their customer service desk that two flights full of angry people were inbound.

Steph found a brochure that told us not to expect any sort of vouchers. No hotel, no taxi, no food.  Nothing.  Thankfully, however, they DID give us vouchers. Taxi. Hotel. Food.

The hotel was the Schaumberg Renaissance. It was ... weird. In some ways, it was crazy-swanky and classy. But in others, it was kinda redneck. Like putting a television in the bathroom mirror.

I'm allergic to down. It's not a life-threatening allergy (yet), but it's annoying. I break out in this itchy little rash that can take days to pass.  And the Renaissance didn't have any feather-free rooms available AND their housekeeping was gone for the day. So we asked where the feathers were, and Steph stripped them from the bed while I showered.

With no blankets, I slept poorly. It's damn near impossible to turn off hotel air conditioning these days, so it was cold.

Oh - the bed was an oversized twin bed. Which makes sense for a convention center.

Our replacement flight was scheduled for 2:45 on Wednesday. We were there in plenty of time, grabbed a bite to eat at the airport, and ... our flight was delayed. First the plane was late, and then the weather.

Then we boarded, taxiied out to the tarmac, and ... waited for three hours while the weather changed several times.

There are a TON of FAA regulations about time. Once you're on the tarmac, after three hours, they have to feed you.

The Chicago to Columbus flight is a little one-hour flight. I don't think they even loaded food for it. So, before that three-hour timer was hit, we were brought back to the gate and deplaned.

Another FAA timer is crew time. It's like long-haul truckers - you can't be working for more than a certain number of hours per day/week. It's a safety thing that actually DOES make sense.

We hit our crew's max time, so needed a new crew. And one wasn't available immediately.

At this point, the passengers were divided into three groups: People who were tired/resigned/apathetic towards the delays, people who were angry about the delays, and people who found the whole situation hilarious. Me? I fit all three categories at various times during the wait.

Apparently, the FAA can grant variances/waivers for the "overtime" on the crew. United got these for our entire flight crew, and we left Chicago shortly after 8 pm.  For our 2:45 pm flight.

After that, we got off the plane, and found our luggage waiting for us. The Badger (a friend who we hadn't met in person) picked us up (after having made MULTIPLE trips to the airport over the course of the last few days), and we got to the hotel, checked in, and crashed.

Now we're headed to the convention center, where we will FINALLY start to enjoy the show.

I hope.

Origins Giveaway: Rory's Story Cubes

To celebrate being at Origins, I figured I'd give something away.

This link is to an Amazon Giveaway.  One lucky winner will get the basic set of Rory's Story Cubes. I hope you enjoy them as much as I do.

The giveaway is open to US residents aged 18 or older, and is being handled by the Amazon Giveaways program, so I have no control over eligibility.

Good luck - and thanks for reading!

Origins

Just a reminder: I'm at Origins this week, so no normal post.

I may post updates from the show, however. And I'm back on Instagram, so expect a few images to appear there, too.

One Good Day

I don't know if y'all know this, but I do play video games, too. Not as often as I play board games these days, but often enough that I spend money on the occasional Season Pass or other game.

And yes, I am allowed to use y'all in a non-ironic manner.

Here's the thing, though.  In my circle of friends, I have a reputation for being good at board games. We've done mixed tournaments (meaning "more than one game involved") and I always do well. Not because I win a lot of games, but because other players score high at some games and low at others - I tend to take second or third at everything.

Now everyone has their preferred styles of game. I'm not especially discriminating: I love auction games. I love dexterity games. I love trick-taking and ladder games. I love worker placement. I love hidden information and asymmetric play.

But I'm not good at everything I like. I'm terrible at dexterity games.  Among the worst, even. It's the one category of game at which I am virtually guaranteed to wind up near the bottom of the standings.

Now let me swing this back around to video games:

The vast majority of what I play is First-Person Shooters. I love FPS games. I play a few sports games from time-to-time. Once in a while, I can be talked into a fighting game. On my computer, I enjoy real-time strategy. But when I'm in front of a console, I'm nearly always playing an FPS game.

I love the hardcore crunchy player-tweakable games, too. You know, where you pair X gun with Y scope and Z ammo and your loadout includes this accessory and that accessory ...

Right now, that means Battlefield 1. It's not as adjustable as Battlefield: Hardline was (and is), but it's a definite step up from Star Wars Battlefront (which I wanted to love, and just ... didn't). I unabashedly love this game, and I have wasted entire weekends sitting in front of my PS4 playing it.

But I'm not very good at it.  Allow me to demonstrate how bad I am:

As they say: A picture is worth 1,000 words. Those numbers are bad. Because, although I love FPS games, I'm bad at them. I play for fun.

That said, sometimes I have a good day.

I nearly always play support-type roles. In Battlefield 1, that means Support or Medic. And I'm usually decent at anything that doesn't involve pulling a trigger.  You see those 1700 kills?  803 of them are with a mortar. And I'm a terrible sniper.

So with their first DLC pack, they introduced weapons that could only be unlocked by meeting certain criteria. Some of those are the kind of thing I can brute force. "30 Kills with ," for example. If I play a thousand games and get one kill every thirty games, I'll eventually get that 30 kills.  Some of them, however, are more difficult.  "5 Headshots In One Round with ."

Ugh.  That's ... that's more difficult. See that "ACCURACY            0.15" up there in the image?  Yeah. Headshots with a sniper rifle might be out of my reach.

But then I was playing while talking to my wife, and I got one. Probably my first sniper headshot since the days of Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare. And I had an unfair advantage with that one (I had a large HDTV when most players were still playing standard-def).  "Did you see that!?" I asked her.

And then I got another. And another.  In fact, I got all five.

It was a good reminder:

Even if you're bad at something, sometimes you will still have a good day. Once in a while, the dice will fall your way and you will succeed at something you'd thought beyond your reach.

It makes me want to play more Ice Cool. Because maybe I'll have a good day at that.

Next week, I don't think I'm going to have a normal post - I have one written, but I'm going to delay it until after the show. I'll be at Origins, so I may do some of what I usually do at GenCon, where I post daily updates of how the day went/what I did.  I'm looking forward to it.